Recent listening

T. Rex – Electric Warrior

This album basically invented glam rock in 1971. At first I was kind of turned off because every song sounds like “Get It On” but after a while I got into it. Now I am certain it’s a bona fide classic rock album.

Marc Bolan slickly crooning voice slides around clipped drums and guitar stabs. The bass is thick and bouncy, like molasses rubber. This is music made for strutting.

Luke Abbott – Holkham Drones

Don’t let the “drone” part scare you. This is some sunny-day synthesizer warmth all mixed up with some minimal beats. Boards of Canada meets Kraftwerk. Perfect background music for a documentary about communes.

Luiza Borac – Enescu: Pièces Impromptues Op. 18

Actually, I want the version of this piece played by Ewa Kupiec as I heard it on Deutschlandfunk radio but it doesn’t seem to be for sale.

This piece for solo piano consists of seven movements which vary from beautiful melodic exercises (as in the first one) to unusually dissonant mood pieces (as in the last). In all pieces terribly intricate rhythms are at play. It seems like the player’s hands are having an argument as to which gets to take the lead. Two melodic lines weave around each other, briefly resolving in beautiful chords before scattering again.

Weird drones and noises

I took an introductory course in SuperCollider, a sound programming language. The simplest thing to make is weird drones and buzzes, and so I’ve been making and listening to some of those.